‘Ah, ye will have yer joke now. An’, sure, I’m a silly old fool. But ye’re goin’ to have yer picture done, aren’t ye? Fegs, ’twould be a shame if ye didn’t. ’Tis a mighty purty picture would be lost to the world if you held back. Why, all the world is crowdin’ to that man’s door. I saw Lady Millbank go in just now. An’ at her time o’ life! Law, the vanity o’ some folk! D’ye know what me brother said to me to-day?’
‘What?’ asks Susan, who is growing interested.
‘Whether I wouldn’t like to see me own face on a card. An’ I tould him as I had seen it for sixty years in a lookin’-glass, an’ that was good enough for me.’
‘But, Miss Ricketty,’ says Susan, seeing with her delicate sense of sympathy beneath the veil that conceals Miss Ricketty’s real desire to be ‘seen on a card,’ ‘why not be taken? It would not give you pleasure, perhaps, but see what pleasure it would give to others. And as for me, I should love a photograph of you.’
‘Oh now, Miss Susan! Sure, ye know, ye wouldn’t care for a picture of the likes of me.’
‘I should like it more than I can say,’ says Susan. ‘Miss Ricketty’—with pretty entreaty— ‘you really must make up your mind to it.’
‘Well, I’ll be thinkin’—I’ll be thinkin’,’ says Miss Ricketty, who is all agog with excitement and flattery. ‘I suppose, Miss Susan dear, that shawl they sent me from America would be too bright?’
‘The very thing,’ says Susan. ‘It would be lovely. And your people in America will certainly recognise it, and it will give them great pleasure to know that you treasure it so highly.’
‘There’s a lot in that,’ says Miss Ricketty, musing—she muses considerably. ‘Well, perhaps—’ Here she pauses again. ‘It may be,’ says she at last. She might, perhaps, have condescended to explain this last oracular speech, but that her bright eye catches sight of three young ladies going past her window. ‘There they go! there they go! Look at them, Miss Susan, my dear! Did ye ever see such quare crathures? May the Vargin give them sense! Look at their hats, an’ the strut o’ them! They’ve a power o’ money, I’m tould. “Articles of virtue” Mr. Connor called them the last day he was in here; but, faith, where the virtue comes in—they do say— But that’s not talk for the likes o’ you or me, dear. But tell me now, Miss Susan, what of Mr. Crosby? I’ve heard that he— Oh, murdher! talk of the divil—’
Miss Ricketty retires behind a huge jar of sweets as Crosby comes into the shop.